On Tuesday I attended the launch of a new IMA Branch: West of England. This is very pleasing as the Branches have the potential to be a huge benefit to members. The champions of this are Garrod Musto, Dr Alison Hooper and Edward Glennie. Garrod is Head of Mathematics at Kingswood Senior School in Bath and this is where the meeting took place.

The talk was by Professor Chris Budd of the University of Bath titled “Confessions of an Industrial Mathematician,” on the theme of his article of the same title in the Febuary 2008 issue of Mathematics Today. Chris is an excellent speaker and the talk was interesting, though I had to make an anxious dash at the end for a train!